 It's automatic responses to that is to speed up. It's Monday, which means it's recovery Monday and on episode 35, we're gonna talk about that. Speed as a natural, expected, almost automatic response to fear and anxiety. So let's get rolling. Let's put the chat overlay up so you guys can see each other as you guys pop in. Just let me know that you can hear me. I say that every week. You'd think I haven't figured out by now, but clearly I do not. So as we wait for everybody to show up loud and clear. Thanks, Pete. Appreciate it. Today we are going to go over the idea that speeding up because the series that we're doing now in recovery Monday, these are all lessons out of this book, 7% slower. We already went through the anxious truth. So now we're going through this book chapter by chapter. I wanna say we're gonna quickly go through it, but I probably shouldn't say that we're gonna go quickly through a book called 7% slower because hashtag irony. But anyway, today we're gonna do chapter two in this book. We're gonna talk about the need to recognize that speed is a natural response to being afraid. Speeding up, running around, rushing around, getting kind of frantic. It's a really natural sort of thing. So we'll talk about that today. It's a relatively short chapter. So we'll have a relatively short lesson and then we'll have a little discussion. We'll answer some questions. We'll see what's going on. Thanks guys, appreciate it. Hello everybody. Let me know where you're from. Hey, Katya, what's happening? We got about 26 people or so. We'll give it another second or two to roll through. If you do not have a copy of this book and you wanna check it out, you can find it on my website at theanxiestruth.com. It actually even has its own website, 7%slower.com so you can check that out if you want. So let's see here. Good morning, Laurie. How's it going from Canada? Amanda is here from Indiana. I know Katya's in Russia, the Netherlands. I love that you guys are from all over the world. That's always really super cool. We never do these at a good time for the Aussies or the Kiwis, but maybe I'll adjust the schedule a little bit so that they can join us one day too. What up, Jason? How's it going? So let's get into this. This is like I said, a relatively short lesson. When we get into an anxious state or a fearful state, really, which is a state driven by the fact that there is some perceived threat to our safety. There's danger of some kind. Now, most people look at that and say, we always use the standard analogy of like, oh, if there's a hungry lion chasing you, hey everybody, what up, Norway? So, and again, just a reminder that if you're coming from the Facebook group, I won't see your name, only Facebook user. But most people talk about that anxious or fearful state, the threat response. And we always use that analogy, oh, there's a lion chasing you or a bear chasing you or something like that. And yeah, sometimes there's a sense of physical threat, physical danger, but really and truly, especially in this book, I kind of go beyond that a little bit. Those analogies still certainly hold true to explain kind of the fight or flight response, for sure. But really, threat detection works and on a lot of different things. So especially in this community, you guys that are watching today, I think now I can hear some GBG. So especially people who are watching today, that threat can take the form of your own body. So a threat can be a sensation that scares you. You don't like it. You think that there's something wrong, it's scary. You think that you're literally in danger. A threat can take the form of a thought that you have. You have a thought that disturbs you. Maybe it's an intrusive thought. It's an ego-distanic thought. It makes you think that you might do things that you don't wanna do. Or this thought tells you that you're a terrible person even though you're not really a terrible person. Or maybe they're just repetitive thoughts that what if I never get better? Or what if I get depressed? So thoughts trigger this response too. So sensations, thoughts, sometimes they're socially based threats. Like this person is judging me. They're gonna ostracize me. They hate me. They're talking about me. I ruin everything. I'm not going to belong. And I think in the end, it's the threat response is just all about like I need to be safe, right? They need to find a way to mitigate this threat so that I can stay safe. And that could be physically safe. It could be safe from thoughts that are disturbing that make you feel like you might go insane, which of course you wanna stay safe from or that you might do something that you don't wanna do. You wanna stay safe from that. Social threats like I'm going to be removed from the group. I'm going to be ostracized. I'll be left alone. A lot of people think, and I don't necessarily disagree with this theory that social threats are part of sort of that evolutionary imperative that said we had a lot better chance to survive when we were part of a social group. So being cast out 30,000 years ago was probably not a good thing because then you had to offend for yourself and that would be super dangerous. So threats can take a lot of different forms. I always need to acknowledge that. It isn't always a rapid heartbeat. It could be a scary thought or a social threat or a family systems threat or something like that. But when we get into that situation for most of us, and we talked about this last week, some people kind of go into that freeze response where they do not speed up. But for the most part, most of us have the response that says, oh, I have to go faster. I go faster. Now, faster isn't necessarily always physical. You may start to speak faster. You think faster. You just take your mental actions faster. You may take quicker physical actions and that's the most common way to recognize somebody who's in an anxious state. They look like they're running around like a chicken with no head. But in the end, it's the recognition is there that like, oh, yeah, that's a natural part of feeling afraid or feeling anxious as I automatically begin to speed up. And that's even a natural response to just feeling stressed. So today, for instance, I'm running a little bit behind, right? I put a lot on my plate today and I went up on an extended call before this so I didn't have a whole lot of time to get here to the camera and everything and get ready. So all of a sudden I discover like I am rushing around like a crazy person to get ready for this when I don't have to rush around. So I have to remind myself too all the time, like, oh, I don't have to rush around, but it's natural when we get stressed, we're under the gun, there's a deadline, we naturally begin to speed up. And when we get anxious and we get afraid, many of us have that situation where they begin to speed up. And so that's what we're addressing here for sure. And the fact that it's almost natural and automatic, you might think like, well, this whole series that we're doing based on 7% slower is learning to slow down when the natural thing is to speed up, right? And we wanna learn to slow down because that's a way to send a signal to our lizard brains that says everything is okay. You could stop firing these threat response alarms. And most people will say, well, how can I help it? Well, it does, I wanna acknowledge especially this chapter, it does seem almost automatic, like how am I supposed to not go fast? And really what I wanna make sure we get out of today's lesson is that you can choose to not go fast, but initially you will tend to speed up. So there was always gonna be, it's almost like an analogy to the Claire Weeks first fear, second fear thing. You can't take away first fear. You will be afraid of things because we're just human, you can't engineer that out. The initial speed up command that comes from the fear center in your brain is always gonna be there, speed up. And we will initially obey that. I think that's just natural. So today, my example, like I found myself rushing around. Like it was automatic, I did not get to stop that response. But I am aware of the response now and that's really what this chapter is all about. And leading to chapter three next week where we talk about recognizing your own personal speed responses, just understanding that like, oh yeah, that is kind of automatic. We will almost automatically begin to run around and rush around. But even though that initial response is almost impossible to squash or prevent, we can catch it and then choose to act in opposition to it. And I have to choose my words carefully because act in opposition never means fight your anxiety or fight the fear. What I mean is do the opposite. So even though your loser brain is saying, speed up, speed up, speed up, you will probably do that for a second or two or a couple of seconds or maybe a minute or two. But then once we have that awareness and we practice this week, oh wait, I'm doing that thing again, where I'm rushing around like crazy. And I don't have to do that. So in the book in chapter two, I gave a couple of silly examples, of what the speeding response might look like. I did a whole little dialogue here where somebody is talking about, I used the example of like, is that a new skirt? Like, yes, I just found I had a good idea where the woman is told that like, well, I had a skirt like that, but I returned it because it made me look fat. Which is silly little example, but that can trigger a threat response. Like, oh, then in your own brain, you start going to, oh, is she telling me, is she telling me that I look fat? Like, should I not have the skirt? Is that wrong? And in that situation, even in that silly little social interaction, it doesn't always have to be racing heart feel like I'm gonna pass out or go insane. Even in that situation, that little fear, that threat trigger that says, oh, she's rejecting you, she's judging you. You run the risk of being removed from the family system or ostracized or left on your own. Threat response is like, we gotta get out of this now. We have to fix this now. Like there's a problem here and it has to be addressed right now. It's always like right now, you gotta do this right now. You turn off the sound on my phone so we don't have to hear that. Sorry about that. But it's always right now, right now. And I think one of the key things that I wanna point out before we sort of end the lecture a little bit, the lecture, listen to me, like a college professor, but is that when that automatic response, no part of your lizard brain ever says, you're in danger. So hey, when you get around to it, can you see if you can address that? Like your amygdala doesn't, is never gonna say like, hey, whenever you got around to this, can you check out this threat? No, it's always, this is urgent. This is urgent right now. There's a threat right now and it is urgent. You must address it right now. And when we follow along with that automatic response, which like I said, you'll always do for the first couple of seconds, first minute or so, but when you continue and make the choice, I will continue to rush around. I will continue to speed up. I will continue to speak fast, think fast, run, run, run, head for the exit. You are literally confirming to your lizard brain, oh yes, this is in fact urgent. So one of the things I would like you to take away from today is the idea that speeding up is an urgency signal. Like it, you know, and I know this might be a little bit triggering for some people, but forget your anxiety problems, just in general, human beings. If you really gotta go to the bathroom because you drank two gallons of water this morning and you gotta make it to like the ladies' room or the men's room, then you will wanna get there quickly because there's that urgent need like, oh, I gotta go now. And we can all relate to that, right? We can make a joke about it, but we can all relate to that. Speeding up is confirmation that like, yes, this is urgent. So if your lizard brain, if your amygdala, if you're overworked, oversensitized, over anxious, over alert brain is constantly looking for threats and constantly finding threats where none actually exist and constantly alerting you to them and constantly telling you that these are urgent threats that must be addressed right now and you obey by going as quick as possible to tell someone your thought, tell them how you're feeling, get help, get soothed, run for the exit, whatever, solve the problem, think, think, think as fast as you can. You are confirming, this is in fact urgent and I should continue to speed up when you tell me to live with me. And that kind of perpetuates the problem. So so much of what we talk about in this community is counterintuitive, doesn't make any common sense, like, but everything feels so urgent, how on God's green earth am I supposed to slow down? Why should I even slow down? I can't possibly slow down, but when we continue to speed up, speed up, speed up, speed up and obey that command unconditionally and without questioning it or becoming aware of it, we are confirming, yes, the idea that my sister-in-law thinks that I might look fat in this dress or the idea that my heart is beating too quickly or the idea that I might snap and have a psychotic break here in the supermarket, this is in fact urgent and we have to treat it as such. You're constantly confirming when you follow the speed up process that these are urgent threats and so you should, you're telling your lizard brain, keep firing these alerts because I'm listening and I'm gonna act on them, right? So one of the things that I, I did kind of mention that evolutionary imperative, speeding up when afraid, speeding up when in danger, speeding up when cornered, if your fight or flight is in fact triggered for a legitimate reason, there's a reason for speed, right? So if there is in fact an angry line chasing you, well, there's no reason to zen out on that and slow down. I think I used that at one point, I made a funny joke about, you know, Buddhist monks that have been eaten by lions, but if there is in fact a real danger and a real threat that is urgent that you do have to respond to, well, going faster makes perfect sense from a level evolutionary standpoint, we want to go faster in order to have a better chance to survive. So sometimes the speed response is warranted. Our problem is that it's triggered every day all day long when it is not warranted, but that's okay. Once you get down the road in recovery, you start to understand that a little better and people also sometimes are afraid. But if I learn to slow down all the time, if I ignore my anxiety, if I don't listen to my threat response, if I don't listen to my thoughts, I'm gonna miss something urgent and then something bad can really happen to me. That's not, I don't wanna just wanna address that for a second, that's not really true. Because as you go down the road to recovery and you start to form a more healthy and normal relationship with Mr. Lizard Brain again, you become a more accurate judge of what is a real threat and what is not. I promise right now, everything seems like a threat and you would feel like, but Drew, if you're gonna tell me to slow down and take it easy, something really could go wrong and I won't get to the hospital in time or something like that. That's not the way this is gonna work. You will start to understand as you go down the road, like, oh yeah, this isn't really a threat. This is my brain acting up again. And you'll know when there really is a threat. I promise, like you'll regain that ability to judge that. So I will say two things that I ended this chapter with and at full credit, by the way, to Hillary Jaster and my editor who made this book so much better than it otherwise would have been by pulling out some of these gems. I said, speeding up kept primitive man alive. Speeding up keeps modern man stuck in a cycle of threat, scanning false alarms, fear, stress and anxiety. And I think that is kind of the premise of this whole book and why I literally wrote a book on learning to slow down when all you wanna do is go faster. And in the end, I think we can acknowledge that like, there's some really good design up here, like excellent design. It got all of us to where we are now where the dominant species on the planet. Maybe you say that's good or bad from a philosophical standpoint, but it didn't get us here. And it does keep us alive and it does keep us moving forward. That's true. But maybe in another 100,000 years, we'll get brain 2.0 maybe. And like some of that will be engineered away because we don't need as much of it as we used to. But for now, this is what we have to work with. So we have to do our best to do that, right? So just keep in mind as you're going throughout your day and you feel like you're in this constant agitated panicky state that it is probably natural for most of you, I understand not all of you to be speeding up and rushing around. And next week, we're gonna talk about learning to recognize what your speed response looks like. Because there's probably a lot of little things going on in your life right now that you aren't even necessarily aware of that are part of that rushing around and sort of urgency response, all right? So I'll talk about that next week. For now, let's go through some of the comments here. So I'll scroll back up, I'll get to as many as I possibly can. No, no, no, no, Bethany puts up the lizard emoji, very good. I always gotta have it. Oh, wait, lizard stuff, ready? I mean, you know me, I'm not usually once a hawk stuff. Buy this book if you don't have the book, it's a good book. But I wanna show you guys a little thing. I think there's one person that knows. See if it focuses. The focus, yeah. So a couple of Saturdays ago, I just started messing around on my Canva account and I had these brass coins struck just as little reminders. Lizard brain, slow down thing. I don't know, if you guys are interested, let me know in the comments. I carry one around now, because it's just a little reminder, plus I like to fidget with things. So I'm thinking I might actually sell those, we'll see. People like those little reminders. I just like playing with the coins. So if you're interested, just drop a comment and I'll see. I don't know if I'm gonna do anything with the coins or not, but it was a fun little exercise. So I'd buy what I want. Yeah, I just like the lizard, to be honest with you, like I just dig the design. So there's something about me that says, I wanna order a bunch of these and put it in the shop. Anyway, we'll see. Okay, so let's see here. Okay, let me just put this up really quickly here, Hans. But what if I have anxiety? I freeze the, I forgot to turn off my screen blanking app. Sorry guys, just lost you for a second here. We turn it off, because I don't need the screen to blank. It's trying to save my eyes. Just, I wanna just acknowledge this. Again, not everybody goes into speed up mode. Some people have this response that Hans has put up on the screen. The immobility response, the freeze response. Unfortunately, I'm just not addressing that here, but I can 100% acknowledge that it is a real thing for some people. We'll talk about that some other time. I don't really wanna go too much into the freeze response and what that is now. I did at least mention it in the book, but there you go. My money don't take, I'll take a lift false. So good. Anyway, Slovenia, England, Bonjour from Montreal, Bonjour. Okay, this is cool here. Let's see here. You need a lizard bell. You would, yeah, I would say I'm gonna start to print my own currency. Let's see how that works out. Like Branch Davidian Compound version two. Yes, when I'm feeling a lot of anxiety, I almost run to the nearest exit. I will learn to slow down. Good job, Lori. This is hard. It's super hard to learn how to do this. It's well worth it 100%, but yes, that's a very common thing. I talk about that in coming chapters in the book, especially if you're out and doing exposures. It's just something I know a lot of you are working on all the time. That speeding up response will make you want to end the event as quickly as possible. I need to get out of the supermarket, out of the shopping mall, back to my house, back to my car, off this highway right now. I need to go right now. So that's a bad signal to send though. When you do run for the nearest exit that says, oh yeah, we gotta get out of here. This is a dangerous place to be. So good, good awareness there for sure. Okay, this one I think I kind of answered already. Sorry, it's a bad question. No, no bad questions. Okay, what is wrong with speeding up? Well, I just spent the last 10 minutes talking about what's wrong with speeding up. So hopefully that answered that. Let's see here. What does Kathleen have to say? Kathleen is killing it here. I awoke with panic and was rushing in the shower and realized I was making it worse. I remembered to slow down and it helped a lot. You guys know, and Kathleen, thanks for putting this up. I appreciate you sharing your experience with that. You guys know that I'm always super careful to talk about how none of this are. These are not panic shields. These are not lessons on how to stop or prevent panic attack. Never, never, never. They're never. So when I was doing a video, a couple of, maybe it was last month with Lauren, Lauren Rakikin, I'm sorry, Lauren Rosen, her new name. When I do my videos with Lauren, we came up with a thing together that said these are tools of navigation, not eradication. And I'm gonna parrot that again and again and again because I don't know who, we came up with it together. But it's super important to understand that slowing down is not a, oh, Drew's teaching us how to stop our panic attacks or how to prevent them from happening. That's not it at all. These are navigation tools. When you learn to slow down, even when you're anxious and amped up and stressed, it is a way to navigate through that state a little bit more productively, effectively, and really productively because you can learn. You learn from that slowing down. Like, oh, look, I slowed down and nothing bad happened. I slowed down and I actually got through everything. I slowed down a little bit and everything actually got done and everything turned out okay. But it is true that many, many people find that the act of slowing down does bring down their level of anxiety and urgency. What it's actually bringing down is the sense of urgency and the act of slowing down when we are anxious and think we should be speeding up or have automatically sped up is actually just a way to put a little bit of space between us and the sensation, us and the anxious thought, us and the fear. It gives you a little bit of wiggle room to work in so that you can make a little bit more reasoned decisions as you go and you can relate to that fear in a little bit more reasonable way. So it sort of gives the higher part of your brain a little bit of chance to weigh in here. And when you slow things down, you get to actually, okay, wait a minute here, I can start to make maybe a little bit more productive decisions on how I'm going to handle the state that I'm in right now. I'm not gonna run to the Facebook group and immediately ask to chat with somebody or be talked down or soothe or say my fear. I'm not gonna run for the exit. I'm not gonna hit the jam on the gas pedal and try to get the car home as quick as possible. But it does take a really long time. Oh, good. So Kathleen just put that up on the screen, which is great too, that, it does take a long time to learn this. This is practice, practice, practice. Let's put up a little GBG comment here. Respelling garage GBG. I'm finding that slowing every motion down acts as mindfulness without anxiety and grounding with anxiety, it's a great tool. This book, I'm gonna keep putting it up on the screen. I think it's a good book, by the way. This book is really a mindfulness manual. Don't tell anybody, but it's actually a mindfulness manual. Because slowing down, when you slow down, you cannot help when you practice slowing down, but to be more mindful of the moment that you are in, you can't help it. So so many people get confused by the idea of mindfulness. That mindfulness is somehow this magic recovery tool. It's a calming tool. It's a grounding tool. It stops anxiety. It makes you less anxious. Okay, that could be one of the effects over time when you begin to live more mindfully. It's certainly a nice stress management tool. It doesn't make your days a little better. But they get overwhelmed by like, I have to do mindfulness so that I can make my anxiety go away. Or they get trapped in like mindfulness with more meaning to it as somehow there's a right way to be mindful, spiritual way to be mindful. It's actually not true. Like in this situation, I think I even wrote in the book, like this is actually a way to learn to be mindful without all that pesky mindfulness. So yeah, there you go. So Bethany says it was stealth mindfulness. It kind of is. And I'll be honest with you, I didn't set out to write a mindfulness manual. It was only about halfway through it that I realized like, oh, shit, this is like a little covert way to learn to live more mindfully. And the fact that GBG is saying that like, that slowing down thing makes him more mindful. You can't help but be more mindful. And one of the most important things I say before I get off that comment is that mindfulness, we never judge our state of mindfulness, right? So mindfulness is just the act of paying attention without judgment. So sometimes you'll feel very mindful and attached and engaged in a moment. Sometimes you won't. That's all okay. It's not like, oh, I can't, I'm getting mindfulness wrong. No, no, no, mindfulness is a practice and start practicing it by practicing slowing down. So it's okay. People get way, way, way caught up in like how to do mindfulness or what it's supposed to feel like. It's not supposed to feel like anything. It's a thing we do, it's an experience. So let's see here. Kathleen's on a roll today. So we'll throw this up here again. My panic caused me to rush, but I slowed down, broke it down logically and realized I was just having seasonal allergies. I feel you on that. I thought I wasn't actually dying, but I had to slow down to figure it out. That right there is a perfect illustration of what I just said a few minutes ago, which is it gives the higher part of your brain a little bit of room to like, hey, I'm here, can I weigh in on this? That's super important. That's super important. Because that reasoning would not that Kathleen is describing here does not get to happen without slowing down a little bit. You're essentially, what I like to think of slowing down when you're anxious is imagine that the anxiety is like your car engine. It's racing right now. Little technical grease belly garage. He knows this stuff. And the engine is spinning like crazy. Learning to slow down is actually just hitting the clutch. It's not hitting the brake. So those of you who are of a certain age and understand what it's like to drive a manual transmission, and I'm dating myself, but so does this gray beard. It's not hitting the brakes. It's actually hitting the clutch. So the engine is still spinning like crazy. But when you hit the clutch, the flywheel disengages from the engine and the car begins to coast and naturally slow down. So that's what this is. And that's what happens. You just disengage from that crazy spinning engine and you get to make a little better decision when you do that, right? So not brakes, clutch. You guys might have to Google what a clutch is. That's okay. Let's see here. Oh, this is good. Carol, this is a great comment. Thank you for sharing this. I feel that urgent need all the time and I become angry with those who don't. This might be the comment of the day right here from my friend Carol. That is incredibly common. And so sometimes I am the brunt in this community and I'm okay, I'm the brunt of that anger. I'm the target for that anger, right? Which is when you want to like roll into the Facebook group for instance and vomit your fear all over the group. And my response is like, I understand how annoying and super frustrating that could be, but it's really common. What you need in those moments is people who can mirror back to you. This is not an emergency. Even though you are 100% sure that it is and you want me to treat it like an emergency too, I'm not. And that sometimes can make you really angry and upset all the time. That like, how come, this is urgent. How come nobody is participating in my emergency? And when you slow things down in a way, you're kind of running counter to that. You're being your own mirroring face of calm. And so that does create a little bit of a conflict. And that's why this is so hard to do, right? It's opposite of what you think you want to do. Carol, that's such a good comment. I appreciate you pointing that out. Let's see here. Hello from Detroit, what up? Canada is here again. I know sometimes people want to ask about specific symptoms. I'm not going to answer questions about specific symptoms. Let's see here. I want a coin, Lizard bill. I will talk about, okay, this is good. Let's put Hans up on the screen today. Hans, I appreciate your contributions of these last week too. When I'm coming out of freeze, I feel a rush on my body and I want to run, but then slowing down is very helpful. So I like that this is a person who seems to have the freeze response, who is actually acknowledging that the freeze response can be a real thing, but then you come out of it. Thank you, Hans. That's important. Cause I think a lot of people hear freeze response and they are afraid that they will get permanently frozen and never be able to navigate out of the panic. So that's really important. There's another comment I'm going to put up from Hans that I noticed very shortly, which is really a big deal. Okay, this is, I'll throw this one up again. You guys are killing it with these. Yes, last week that today is really good. I'm enjoying these. I realized that almost everyone I know with anxiety moves and thinks quickly. I wonder if it's chicken or the egg. Don't know that, but I do address this. I wrote about it a little bit and 7% slower. Some people learn to go out, they speed up because they've learned that they have to always be on the move quickly, quickly, quickly to get away from those uncomfortable feelings or thoughts. So that can be a habit that you learn. Some people actually wear speed as a badge of honor. Guilty, I used to be the same way. I would have told you that my ridiculous and not necessarily healthy ability to perform at a very high pace at a very high level somehow was an accomplishment. Guess what? It's not, it's in no way an accomplishment because in the end we can't even really measure the time we save by doing that. So by trying to do all of my tasks as quickly as possible to maybe confirm to my own ego that I could, maybe at the end of the day I saved the grand total of a couple of minutes, maybe. And what was the cost for that? The cost for that was too high. So some people wind up wearing that I'm the fast guy as a bit of a badge of honor. And some people just, that's a habit that you begin to learn again and again and again. So which one comes first? Not really sure, but I think my opinion is that part of what can drive us into these disordered states sometimes is speed as a personality trait or an accomplishment or a badge of honor. I'm the fast guy, I must be the fast guy, as person, if you will. So good comment, let's see here. This is a good question here. Is going for run while having an attack also kind of speeding up or is it doing the opposite? So that's a good question because run clearly you'd be going faster because it's a run. That's okay, that's supposed to happen. I think the answer to this depends on the intent. If your default response when anxious is now I must go for a run because this takes my anxiety away. Well, it's not so much a speeding up slowing down thing as an escape thing, right? So you gotta be super careful about that. If it is I'm okay as long as I can run when anxious you wanna not do that. So yeah, if you're gonna run, you're gonna run, you're speeding up because you're just running you're jogging, you're going faster than a regular walk. I don't think it necessarily is a speeding up thing. It depends on your intention and how you're using that tool, right? So has that for a deliciously non-committal answer but that's the best answer I could give you. So good question, but it depends on the context. Depends on the context. So where was, here we go. This is the other one that I wanted to put up from Hans real quick. The willingness to slow it down makes you more aware of your emotions including fear. Let's talk about this for a second. This is a big criticism. Again, we'll talk about it in future chapters that people have when it comes to mindfulness when it comes to slowing down and when it comes to things like meditation and practicing sitting quietly and learning to focus and pay attention. Because many people will say, but if I do that I am left face to face with no barrier between me and either those strong emotions or those scary thoughts. That's true. That's 100% true. Because part of the recovery process is learning to face those things and navigate through them. Now, let me be 100% acknowledging of people who are coming from slightly different backgrounds or maybe there's more than just an anxiety disorder at play and there are times when there is a difficulty facing strong emotions and regulating those things. I get that. So sometimes we do care that it puts you face to face with those emotions and that's an individual thing and anybody listening to me has to advocate for themselves. Do you know what your situation is? If you're working dialectical behavior therapy and you have emotional regulation problems then the idea of intentionally coming face to face with big emotions or strong thoughts presents some extra challenges to you and that's okay. Hopefully you'll be working on that in therapy. But generally speaking, even in that situation over time we are learning to feel the feels, the scary thoughts, the scary sensations and to move through them. So this is 100% true what Hans is saying and the answer to that is correct which is never the answer that anybody wants. Let's see here. Oh, Jolie was driving, it's like I'll put it up there just because we got a manual transmission here with us. Thank you, Jolie. It makes me feel a little better. And yes, I'm that old. You can't even get a manual transmission on a lot of cars right now. I had a Dodge Challenger for a few years like crazy, loud muscle car. What a surprise, Drew had a Dodge Challenger. I couldn't get it. I couldn't get it with a manual transmission. I could, it was a special order. The computers are smarter and shifting than we are now, I guess, what are you gonna say? All right, let's see here. Going several cents, Laura, is my wife's favorite part of my recovery is a good comment. Hey Laura, what up? Let's put Laura up on the screen. Some people like to say move more when you feel that way like jumping jacks. Okay, this is good. Thank you for following up on the running thing Laura. I appreciate it. Everybody's making jokes here. You guys are cracking me up. So let's talk about Laura's comment really quick, 32 minutes, we've got another couple of minutes. This is a common bit of, I'm gonna call it bad advice. So you hear this reasonably often. If you start to feel crappy, if you feel panicky, if you feel anxiety rise, I've had people swear that the right thing to do is to hit the ground and start doing pushups. I literally know a person who ran into a big problem because they could not do pushups at the concert that they were at and it caused a huge ruckus because it was very disruptive to the people around them that this person wanted a clear space on the floor to do pushups because he was getting anxious and it was a big issue. That is conditional okayness. I'm okay as long as I do pushups, I'm okay as long as I do jumping jacks, I'm okay as long as I run, as long as I start to do whatever, squats or burpees or whatever it is. But here's reality and this is not an opinion, this is fact and it has been studied in a lab a zillion times. Anybody who's into exercise science and those sort of things will tell you that when you exercise, the chemistry, the chemicals associated with anxiety go up in your bloodstream. So the idea that you are burning off adrenaline is actually not correct at all. It's not correct at all. There's a reason why exercise is generally catabolic in nature. It breaks down, it does not build up. It's not anabolic, it's catabolic because the stress hormones are elevated in your bloodstream when you exercise. So I'm gonna put that little ridiculous thing, go burn off the adrenaline to bed. Now it might make you feel better in the end because it's a little bit of stress relief or mental break and whatever, if it's a coping strategy and it is not an escape strategy, then by all means go for a run, but know that you're not burning off adrenaline because you're not okay. You might be better when you run or do your jumping jacks at letting the adrenaline peak and then come down naturally and run its course. There's no such thing, you're not burning off adrenaline when you exercise. Okay, so let's see here. Okay, let's put this up, this isn't bad. It's a good comment. It's a crappy time in the world to gauge anxiety. Well, that's true. And I think, let me think about this for a second. I get that, I really do. I don't disagree with the comment, but it's always a crappy time. When in the state of disordered anxiety, we can't actually, we're not good at judging the source of the anxiety or the urgency of the anxiety. So when the world is a little bit off kilter, like it feels like it just always is now. And my theory on that is it's always been, but we just pay more attention to it now, okay? But when the world is a little bit off kilter and there are things that are legitimately concerning, like wars and pandemics and things of that nature, I get that, those are anxiety producing. It's natural to feel anxious or worried or concerned or have an emotional reaction to those things. Where we have a problem gauging in our community, disordered anxiety community, is what the urgency of that anxiety is. And that the state of feeling anxious and agitated itself is judged as being a problem, as opposed to, man, the war in Ukraine is really making me anxious. Get that, I totally get that. But then the fact that, and now because I am anxious, now I have a problem, that's the gauging and judging problem that we tend to have in this community, right? All right, I'm gonna put that up on the screen because that is a long time coming. Let's see here. Yes, this is true, but I gotta put it up on the screen. Sarah, I appreciate this comment. It's all about learning to be comfortable, being uncomfortable, easier said than done though. It is hard. Hard doesn't equal impossible, right? So it's always important to understand that. This is difficult, no dead about that. But this is one of those sort of like social media cliches, especially in like the wellness community and the personal growth community and the level up community, get comfortable being an uncomfortable man. This is not a character building exercise. In the end, it may change you and teach you lessons over time. You always have to remember that it's not, that is not like a hardcore thing. Get comfortable being, growth happens in the uncomfortable places, man. Like if I see that one more time in my social media feed, I'm gonna hurl. Okay, I get it, I understand. But that doesn't necessarily, that's not the application in our application, in our community. Doing uncomfortable things is a learning experience. It's not a character building experience. It's not a, look how hardcore I am. Look how committed to growth I am. It is, I will learn from the experience. What will this experience teach me? This is why I do it. So I think it's really important to understand that because some people feel like if I can't do it, I'm weak, I'm failing. Like look at all these gurus telling me to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Okay, but why are you doing it? I'm doing it to learn. So if I can endure a little bit of discomfort to take something out of that today, I went. I went. Okay, it's important. No, no, no, no, no. I'll put this up really quickly. I started a new exercise regimen three weeks ago. I completely had to reacquaint myself with my anxiety symptoms. All good now though. Exercise is one of the great forms of interoceptive exposure. So when I first went back into the gym and I was a gym rat through my teenage years and earlier years and in my recovery when I decided I want to start lifting again seriously, get back into shape. I really had to work hard because it was tremendous interoceptive exposure. My heart was racing. I was gasping for air. I was feeling lightheaded after a heavy set of squats or putting a lot of weight on the light press machine or whatever. I had to get used to all of those sensations. And I was doing pretty good in my recovery but they were all boom, like tidal waves. And I had to learn to slow everything down in the gym and allow those sensations to come and go. So good point. Exercise often does that. So let's put this up on the screen. Stacey, I'm super proud of you that you are walking to your mailbox every day. I'm so happy to hear that. And look, you are learning that you can walk to your mailbox every day. Nothing bad happens. And you are 100% correct. I will endorse this all day long that no step is too small. Excellent. Starting by walking to your mailbox is perfectly cool. I'm with you 100% on that. So keep going. You're for you. I'm happy to hear that. So let's see here. I just, yeah, I'm with you on this stuff. I just buy the cliche phony platitude statements in self-help communities. That's a whole nother rant. I won't get into it now. Clickbait is a powerful thing. People like me, you know, whatever you want to call me a content creator or whatever, we are rewarded for that. If we can get you to click and like and pay attention and come back and stay on the scroll a little more, use the app a little more and get rewarded with attention and likes and exposure and algorithmic rewards. So there's a reason why that stuff is so prevalent because people click on it because it temporarily makes them feel better, makes them feel like they're doing something. And then the creator that puts those out there is rewarded by the algorithm with more follows and likes and attention. They'd be money if they're a YouTuber. And so they do it again. So that's why this community that sometimes that gets amped up to a really high level, but I'm with you on that. Anyway, all right guys, I appreciate you popping by. We did pretty good today, about 40 minutes. Perfect. Again, if you want a copy of this book, 7% slower layer, you can go to my website, the anxious truth.com or go to 7% slower.com. My buddy Craig from Year of the Phoenix Productions. Sorry, I just clapped right into the mic that had to be loud. My buddy Craig from Year of the Phoenix Productions made a really cool trailer for this book. Believe it or not, it has its own trailer. So if you go to 7% slower.com, you can even watch the trailer, which I think is pretty cool. Craig did a great job. And that's it. We'll be back again next week. Next week, we're gonna do a chapter on how to recognize your own speeding up response. Cause if you recognize it, then you can start to work on those things. So that's what we're gonna talk about next week. I appreciate you guys coming by. Just a quick reminder, this will stay on my YouTube channel. It will stay on the Facebook page. It will stay in the Facebook group. But if you wanna come back and watch these again and again and again, which I recommend you do sometimes, but not all the time, the YouTube channel is probably the best way. Subscribe to the channel and they're on a playlist. So you can always go back and watch all the recovery Mondays. And that's it. So thanks guys for your attention. Dig the comments, the jokes, the socializing. You guys are awesome. I really enjoyed the last two weeks. Looking forward to next week.